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Published: August 7th 2007
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Whitsundays 1
Kitted out and raring to go for my first scuba dive G'day!
After a couple of sleepless nights in Rockhampton due to my uncanny knack of picking hostels in the noisiest part of towns (ie the red light districts!) when Suze, Brenda and I arrived in Airlie Beach we were all looking forward to getting a good kip before heading out on the boat to sail round the Whitsunday Islands for a few days. We had a pretty chilled out night but were out of luck with sleep since the hostel we stayed at, "Magnums", was definately a party hostel with the tunes blaring out till 5.30am. So we were all half dead the following day when we made our way down to the marina to board our home for the next few days "The Clipper" sailboat.
Brenda and Suze were delighted to see a couple of girls, Jessie and Anna, that they had met in Byron Bay were also on the same boat as us. We had heard that The Clipper was one of the best boats around to do the Whitsundays tour on so were really looking forward to it. There were 50 passengers, mostly in their twenties, so we knew straight away that it was going to
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Overlooking Whitehaven Beach be a total laugh. Once on board we found our teeny cabins - I had expected them to be small but wasn't prepared for just quite how compact they were! - and then got back on deck and got down to the serious business of drinking and getting to know everyone over a few drinking games. Me and Suze definately got our second wind as us and a couple of English guys we met were the last ones up apart from Brenda who out-did us all and partied till 5am (though I think a certain Mr Sweden might have provided a little incentive to keep her eyes open!).
The following day we were woken at 6.30am (ugh) to get breakfast and then we headed out on a dinghy to go to Whithaven Beach which is a seemingly endless stretch of pure white sand that is rated as one of the best beaches in the world. When we got there the tides were out so we didn't see the classic view that appears in all the postcards but it was still pretty breathtaking nonetheless. We first of all headed up to a lookout to take in the full view before
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Taking control of the boat when no-one's looking. Possibly how we ended up veering slightly off course! heading onto the beach itself and collapsing for a much needed nap! As you can imagine we had had quite a grumble about getting dragged out of our beds so early after the sesh the previous night but when we were leaving the beach a couple of hours later hordes of boat groups started arriving so we grudgingly agreed that it had been worth getting up that bit earlier to get the beach to ourselves.
Once back on the boat we tucked into a great lunch and then chilled out on the top deck for a while. Then we donned our stinger suits, were handed a snorkel and mask and set off to get our first proper views of the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately the visibility in the water wasn't great but I did manage to see a huge rainbow fish and a turtle swimming by which was pretty cool. Then we were called back to the boat so that we could move to a better spot and the moment of truth had finally arrived - I was getting to do my first ever scuba dive!
Brenda was feeling a little too delicate from the night before and
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Taking time out on the top deck with Brenda, Suze and Jessie had struggled with the snorkelling so she decided to give it a miss. So Suze and I were the only girls who attended the briefing to find out about all the hideous ways we could die while attempting to scuba dive if we didn't follow all instructions to the letter, reassuring stuff! Slightly more nervous but still very excited we got back in our stinger suits and got kitted out with our tanks and weight belts and stuff. Then we headed out on the dinghy with another couple of guys from Glasgow and Sam our instructor to do our dive. Sam ran us through all the techniques of breathing properly and different signals we would be using under water. Since it was only an introductory dive we didn't have to worry about the technicalities of checking we had the proper weighting or monitoring our pressure as Sam did all that for us. Suze, who isn't very confident in the water, decided she didn't feel comfortable enough to go for the full dive as she had trouble getting the breathing right.
So it was team Scotland that headed out I quickly felt pretty comfortable doing it and once the breathing
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Enjoying the sunset from the top deck came naturally to me I was soon mesmerised by what I was surrounded by, the visibility here was much better than it had been in the morning so it was just an incredible experience. To begin with we were seeing the kind of things you do when you snorkel but as we went deeper we were soon swimming alongside entire schools of fish and looking at all the weird and wonderful things that live on the sea bed such as giant clams. It was great! I did try and be sneaky and steal a bit of coral from the sea bed but every time I went to do it Sam turned round so I was out of luck! One of the guys started having a bit of trouble and went to the surface to be collected by the boat but me and the other guy, Jamie, couldn't get enough and just wanted to see more and more! When we finally surfaced I was on such a high and all I wanted to do was go back down but Sam told us that we had actually exceeded the depth that you are supposed to go to on a first dive (it's
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My fate after walking the plank. And no, people didn't queue up to give me a push! 8 metres but we went to 9) so we needed to give our bodies a breather. I headed back to the boat absolutely elated and found that all the guys were jumping from the "gang plank" on the top deck so I had a wee go at that too before watching the sunset and then finally heading for the showers. What an amazing day!
After a much appreciated dinner we headed up to the deck for our final night on the boat. The drinking games began again but were interupted by the crew who had their own game to play with us - "disco box". This entailed getting an empty box of "Goon" (wine's answer to White Lightning) and having everyone take a turn to pick it up with their teeth(hygenic I know). If any part of your body touched the floor you got a penalty - the first time you were let off with it, the second time you got spanked by one of the crew with a huge yellow flipper, and the third time you had to down your drink and were out of the game. Once everyone had had their go a bit of the box
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Getting to know everyone over a few drinking games was ripped off so that you had to bend further down to pick it up. At the end it was literally a square of cardboard lying on the floor and some of the boys (none of the girls) still managed to pick it up, very impressive! Humiliating in the extreme but it turned out to be a complete laugh, although it did hurt when I finally succummed to the flipper!
After this we resumed our drinking games and I got chatting to the guys from Glasgow I'd been diving with. They were telling me about their trip in India and I mentioned that Brendan had been there before he met me in Thailand. And wouldn't you know it, they only bloomin' met him when they were out there! How funny that we ended up on the same boat - talk about a small world, freaky!
The following day we packed up all our stuff and got onto the top deck as soon as possible to enjoy the time left as much as possible. We got back to the marina in Airlie Beach early in the afternoon and made a beeline back to the hostel to get a shower
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Taking my turn at humiliating myself during "Disco Box", it's trickier than you'd think after half a bottle of gin! and catch up on some sleep. That night the owner of the boat had put on a big bash for us at one of the pubs so we all met up again and got stuck into white sangrias (odd I know) and had a great last night together. I had such a wicked time on The Clipper with all the crowd we met, it was a fantastic weekend and definately one of my highlights. We leave Airlie Beach tomorrow and head north to Townsville and Magnetic Island for four or five days so I'm looking forward to chilling out in the sun and not doing much of anything!
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